


Advent XI

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Advent, Backstory, Character Study, Chiaroscuro mood swings, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:03:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok, this one's a bit dark and broody, and it touches on purely hypothetical backstory--but backstory that's always seemed to fit, for my head canon. Mummy and John have a conversation at one side of the grand stage.</p><p>It ends light.</p><p>I'm listing some trigger warnings at the BOTTOM of the story--they're minor, but if you worry about triggers, there are a couple that go by in passing. Not in depth or graphic, and I don't want to give them away--but check the end notes if you're worried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent XI

“I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket,” Mummy said, smiling apologetically at John Watson. “I know Mikey wanted to go to Midnight Mass, but—and I mean, _mass._ It’s not like I thought he’d ever believe in it all. It was just what one did, back then. And Father had been brought up C of E. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have given in and let the boys go to Harrow. Or at least insisted on Oswestry. Someplace secular.”

John looked at the woman and frowned. He still found the senior Holmeses paradoxical when considered as parents for Sherlock and Mycroft. Hell, he still found it implausible that Mycroft’s family name was “Mike.” Much less Mummy’s preferred “Mikey.” He’d always imagined the man springing into life fully formed, if not fully grown—a tiny man in a tiny bespoke suit with a tiny umbrella and a tiny receding hairline. No doubt he’d been driven around by a tiny mechanical chauffeur in a tiny black plastic three-wheel Jaguar marked Playskool.

“I didn’t get the feeling he was, er…well. _Pious._ ” He said it with the uneasy tone of any modern Briton. The combination of public show and pushy religious flag-waving left excessive piety very much not-done, even among the pious. “More, well, secular religion, I suppose. After all. It’s Christmas. Baby Christ Child and stars and Midnight Mass are all right at Christmas no matter who you are.”

She brooded. “I never did seem to get things right with Mikey,” she said, gloomily. “Sherlock was so much easier.”

Which John decided might be listed as a compelling reason to have Mummy Holmes committed. She was obviously more than a few crackers short of a whole packet. “Mmmm,” he said, failing to come up with anything more coherent to say. Then inspiration hit, and he added. “At least we got lucky. No mass. No singing carols. Lucky, that.”

She nodded, but sighed. “Trapped in Holmescroft for Christmas.” She sighed again.

John looked around. Secretly he agreed with her. Oh, it was a grand place. That was the trouble. It made him feel small and common and out of place and a bit grubby. He and his parents had not been “Holmescroft” sort of people. It was all far too Downton Abbey for him, and while it was clear Mycroft was floating around on cloud nine, and Lestrade was amused and perfectly willing to adapt and let his lover swan around playing both lord and lady of the manor, and Mary and Janine were giggling in awed amazement at finding themselves in the middle of a production that ought to be called “A Merchant Ivory Christmas,” he and Sherlock had been finding corners to hide in and snigger their glee at the growing drifts of Christmas cliché.

They had a bet on whether the tree topper would be a star, a fairy, or an angel. John’s money was on an angel. Mycroft seemed the type to need thrones, powers, and dominions to answer his holiday needs. Sherlock, in a fit of malice, was betting on a fairy—but admitted that he thought the true odds were in favor of a star. “Just religious enough, just universal and secular enough, and he can find something gaudy and glittery without accidentally ending up twee.”

Still, it seemed a bit odd for a Holmes—the rightful lady of the manor—to dislike the Holmes family mansion.

“You don’t like the place?”

“It’s a bloody pretentious mausoleum,” she growled. “Mummy and Daddy adored it when they were alive. So excited I’d married a mansion. But I was the one who got us out of here before…” She stopped, then, and swallowed. “Well. Anyway. At least Sherlock never had to grow up here—just spend Christmas.”

“Mycroft, though?”

“Only until he was seven. Then I was able to work out a way to close the place as a residence, get basic maintenance from the National Trust, and move us into the Dower House,” she said, and sighed. “So much nicer, and a much better place to raise children, I do think.”

Just like her sons, she managed to make her conviction sound like a royal stamp of approval of some sort. What Mummy Holmes thinks, wise men agree with? John fought down an amused smile.

What had he done to deserve being surrounded by so many opinionated tyrants? Sherlock, Mary, Mycroft—now Mummy. Not a one of them ever inclined to slip a qualifier in next to a pronouncement or hesitate before issuing a proclamation. His karma must be excitingly black and sullied, that was all he could think…

“I have a hard time imagining them as boys,” he said, trying to make polite conversation. “They’re childish, but not boyish, if you get what I’m saying.” Then he wanted to kick himself—especially when Mummy glowered at him and harrumphed. “I mean—childlike in spirit,” he rapidly amended.

One eyebrow flew high—then higher.

“Erm. Like Peter Pan,” he said, beginning to sweat.

She snorted, then chuckled. “Well. Sherlock, perhaps. Though I promise you, he really preferred playing Hook, when he was little. He had to coerce Mike to play Pan—and he drew the line at crowing or consorting with Tinkerbell, though he did tell me privately that Tink was the best character in the book, if only for her bitchy qualities.”

John laughed. “Now that I can believe. He’s witty, I’ll give Mycroft that much.”

She shrugged, and frowned. “Now I just worry he was already afraid to be caught ‘consorting with fairies,’” she said. “At least Sherlock had Sher…” She stopped, biting back whatever she’d been going to say. She started again. “He really enjoyed the family dog. Redbeard saw him through a lot—Mike was never any good at managing Sherlock. I remember…”

“What?” he said, sensing a story being kept back, and always fascinated by the puzzle that was Sherlock. “Mycroft put his foot in it, somehow?”

She looked away, then said, flatly, “After my last miscarriage, I heard him explaining to Sherlock that I had a statistical probability of never carrying to term again.” She gave a bitter chuckle. “He was right enough there. And I will admit, Sherlock seemed comforted.”

John blinked, caught flatfooted. “Oh.” He looked away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Well, people don’t, do they?” She stood, and walked to the window, looking out into the night. “I almost wish we had been able to make it in to the mass, now,” she said. “Maybe singing would have cut the gloom in this place.”

“Did you have many miscarriages,” he asked, gently.

“Three, all told,” she said. “And a cot death.”

“Oh.”

“It’s part of why I chose to leave off teaching,” she said. “I kept hoping…”

“Yes,” he said, in his doctor’s voice. He’d learned to say empty things like that to people who would never truly heal: to men with lost legs and women with just one breast left and children who handled their cancer death-sentence better than their parents did. “One does,” he added.

“You have a beautiful daughter.” He could see her eyes reflected in the window glass—big, with that stare into eternity that set your hair rising on your scalp.

“Yes, I do.”

“Treasure her,” she said, then turned back and forced a sprightly smile. “Well, if we can’t do Midnight Mass, perhaps we should wrest control of the stereo and pick our own favorites,” she said. “Mikey’s too stuffy by far. I think I’ll put on some Christmas swing.”

And soon “Let it snow” was filling the hall and Sherlock and Janine were laughing like loons as he taught her to dance the Lindy Hop to the bubbling music.

 

 **Nota Bene:** Find a swing version of "Let it Snow"[ here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0B3Z7RN-uc).

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for mention of miscarriages and a crib/cot death.


End file.
